Personal

On May 24th, I wrote a post titled Shifting To Maker Mode For The Summer . I had full intentions of making this shift around Memorial Day and sustaining it until Labor Day. I have completely failed at this. While I’m managed to stay off social media and read a lot more than watch TV, I massively underestimated the amount of transactional activity I’d have this summer. On Monday mornings, when I’d look at my schedule for the week, I’d see a wall of blue through Friday, starting early in the morning and going until dinner time. My goal was to have nothing scheduled until 1 pm with an upper bound at 5 pm, but this ended up being an epic fail. And, as a bonus, I’ve had a dinner almost every night between Monday and Thursday so far this summer (that’s not a good thing.) I’ve had a few days that weren’t completely full, but they’ve ended up being catch-up days. ...

Happy Anniversary Amy . We’ve been together for 27 years and we’ve been married for 24 of them. It amazes me that you put up with me. I look forward to spending as many years together as we get on this planet. And, if we are lucky, some technology will get created before we vanish that allows us to spend infinity together, although I’m not sure I’d wish me on you for infinity.

My parents have been married for 54 years today. That’s 19,710 days. Mom / Dad – happy anniversary! Your relationship is an inspiration to me. You have set an incredible example of a full and equal partnership that I know has deeply influenced my approach to my marriage with Amy. I also know that it has inspired many others. Thank you. Congratulations. And Dad, it’s pretty cool to see a photo of you with hair.

An hour into dinner last night with Alex Rigopulos, he picked up his phone, tapped away at it for a few seconds, and slid it across the table to me. I then read the following: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig. Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me. ...

My favorite and most productive time of the year is from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Basically, summertime. Normally I’d declare this the Tuesday after the Memorial Day weekend but I’m just getting over a cold so fuck it, summertime starts today. During maker mode, I try to only do meetings and phone calls in the afternoons between 1 and 5. There are some exceptions – mostly board meetings – but I try to give myself lots of space to work on the longer term stuff. While this is mostly writing, it also includes deeper work for specific companies, especially around product and product strategy. Essentially, things that take more than 30 minutes of concentration. ...

Amazingly, I still haven’t conditioned myself to turn my phone horizontally when I take a video. I feel old. I’m sitting in my condo downtown, drinking coffee, listening to Soundgarden, and contemplating the dissonance of so many things. I just got off a Facetime saying good morning to Amy and talking to Brooks and Cooper. Both Chris Cornell and Roger Ailes died in the past 24 hours and I saw both alerts within 15 minutes of each other this morning. ...

I’m sitting up in Amy’s office on a beautiful Tuesday morning listening to the Liz Wright station Pandora. Amy is downstairs doing something with the dogs. I just cried for a few minutes after reading Ted Rheingold’s post As I Lay Dying . When I got to the final section, which he calls “Now,” I read it three times. “I’ve gained some powerful emotional powers (super powers) in what I’ve been calling my second life. Most all my deep-set hangups died with my first life. A number (but not all) of my grudges, entitled expectations, self-assumed responsibilities, judgements are simply gone. I have no FOMO. There isn’t an event I’ve heard of since I’ve recovered that I wish I would have been at. I’m simply content to be alive and living my life. I have no bucket list. Life is the bucket.” ...

Amy and I just took a two-week vacation. We were mostly off the grid, to the extent we could be given several things we were working on together. We hid from the world, caught our breath, and regrouped. I often get asked what my rhythm is on a vacation like this. It’s simple – I have no rhythm or schedule. My days are organized around waking up when I feel like it and going to bed when I’m tired. When I look at my Fitbit sleep data, I got at least nine hours of sleep every day. My resting heart rate was 62 at the beginning of the month (down from 69 when I declared a travel moratorium) and is 57 today. ...

In our very divided world right now, this video is worth three minutes of your life on this Super Bowl Sunday.

A snarky person could call the title of this post “the tagline for Facebook and Twitter.” A bitter person could expand this to mean all of media. I’ve got a cold (it’s a bummer to end the year with a cold, but if it runs its course by January 1st I’ll be happy) so it’s been hard to concentrate this morning. Instead of working on the final draft of the Second Edition of Startup Opportunities: Know When to Quit Your Day Job (being published by Wiley in Q117) I’ve been surfing the web, looking at Twitter and Facebook, responding to email, and drinking apple cider. ...